Broadly speaking, the “conceptzia” on that Yom Kippur of 1973 went as follows: The Arab states, battered and bloody from the Six-Day War, are in shock. And when Israel – finally – has strategic depth on the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, as well as an incomparable air force, the likelihood that Syria and Egypt will start another war in the coming decade is extremely low.

The conceptzia on this Yom Kippur, 43 years later, holds (broadly speaking) that the terrorist organizations aren’t able, or at this point don’t want, to start another bloody intifada. Over the past year, we’ve mainly had to deal with lone-wolf terrorists, about whom there is virtually no intelligence and who are therefore difficult to catch before they go out to carry out their designs. Moreover, Facebook and other social media are vehicles for inciting to murder, according to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan.

So if, this conceptzia continues, we manage to retard the incitement, improve our intelligence, prevent Jews from ascending the Temple Mount and put enough troops in Jerusalem and the West Bank, we’ll succeed in lowering the flames until they die out. And above all, this is a territorial conflict. If we settle it, we’ll neutralize the principal motivation for the attacks. After all, what the terrorists want is political independence, not to kill for the sake of killing.

There is, of course, an urge to kill Jews in order to establish a Palestinian state; there is also massive incitement on the theme that “Al-Aqsa is in danger,” and that one should give one’s life to save it from the infidels. But it’s highly doubtful that these are the main reasons for the unceasing Arab murderousness ever since the modern return to Zion began.

The Arabs know — alas, all too well — that the Jews aren’t desecrating Al-Aqsa, that they are forbidden even to murmur a chapter of Psalms on their holy mount. After all, it’s the Arabs, specifically the Waqf, who enforce this. And the Jewish police are the ones who put Jews on trial for daring to rebel against this humiliating, illegal ban.

Nor is “the occupation” the main reason for these campaigns of murder. The Palestinians know that if they were to utter even a peep about their willingness to accept the 1967 borders in exchange for waiving the right of return and declaring an end to the conflict, most of their territorial and political demands would be in their hands. Therefore, the concept that terror is the weapon of the weak Palestinians in their war for independence is fundamentally mistaken.

Palestinian murderousness is part and parcel of the general Arab murderousness we are witnessing. Arabs are murdering Arabs with a cruelty that sometimes recalls that of the Nazis, from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Millions, including infants and toddlers, have been slaughtered in all kinds of ways by their brothers in religion, nationality and race. In Yemen (where Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser used mustard gas dozens of years before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Syrian President Bashar Assad), in North Africa, in the Middle East – and farther east – Muslims are fighting Muslims, and none of them shows mercy. These very days, we’re witnessing a massacre occurring in Syria.

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So why should they behave any differently toward us, the emissaries of Satan and enemies of the Prophet and of all humanity? The reason the number of Arabs murdered by other Arabs runs into the millions, while our own losses are about one thousandth of that, stems solely from our ability to defend ourselves.

I recommend starting from this point to understand even what happened in the past, and certainly – when the images of the atrocities in Aleppo are before our very eyes – to understand the present and the future. The terrifying waves of murder all around us have intensified greatly since the “Arab Spring,” aka the crumbling of the artificial “nation states” established by the colonial powers in the early 20th century.

The conclusion from all of these is unequivocal: If Arabs can’t live alongside their Arab brothers, they surely won’t want – as they have proven repeatedly over the past 120 years – to live alongside Jews. Consequently they have rejected and continue to reject every agreement ever proposed to them. This, even if you deny it and even if you don’t want it, is the real Middle East.

Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.